To utilize the triple bottom line as an effectiveness judgement, you first need to know what the triple bottom line is. This is in general, people planet profit – social sustainability, environmental sustainability, economic sustainability — trying to gauge sustainability by how it functions in all these spheres, not just one. So effective design then must be design that is economically, socially AND environmentally sustainable. (viable?).

• (A VENN DIAGRAM OF THE TRIPLE SUSTAINABILITIES OVERLAPPING)
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  • oh, and here is an interesting image too:

Yeah great. But wtf. What does this actually mean! I've been saying this and thinking about it for over a decade. How does this help anyone? how does this help a designer?

Typically, design's effectiveness is ONLY measured via its economic viability. Does this cost too much? Is this expensive to produce? Does this designer charge too high a rate? whats the ROI? what did I make having spent this design budget? how many new customers did this mailer generate? etc.

Well, the triple bottom line would say, no more. You cannot ONLY judge "success" of a design on these economic metrics – does it generate a lot of new leads BUT ALSO generate a lot of new carbon pollution? well, that's ineffective design! did we make a lot of books at the cost of slave labor in an overseas printing facility that also pollutes the surrounding landscape with heavy metals and VOCs? BAD DESIGN!

The goal here is to migrate the thinking around what "good design" is – there is good design and bad design; instead of good "normal" design and then some other kind of sustainable design and then maybe bad "normal" design… ANYWAY. We should have "Good Design" > design that is socially, environmentally, and economically concerned, and then bad design – design that is only concerned with one of these things…

How does this move us to a different paradigm for teaching design? for making design? for evaluating design? How does this get us away from pure aesthetic judgements of "quality" in a design? Does this allow for other concepts than pure formalism in the discussion?

How are other industries or companies using the triple bottom line effectively? where and how else do I research this? how can this be a selling point to a client? how to market oneself this way? triple bottom line designer? does that bring me new clients?

What is social sustainability? how does one design for it? do the precious plastics things fit into this? is collaborating with the united workers, with the Zero Waste people, is that socially sustainable? Does finding clients that are doing this stuff the right way for a designer to get into this?

There are some good questions – what is a designer to do? find new clients? find new projects? or bring new thinking and tools to all the old projects? Can you do this AND work with everyone you used to? does some value shifting have to happen and then suddenly you are in a different place? a different space? and you can't work with or communicate effectively with those from before (_Everything is Fucked_ has something about this; newtons laws sections… didn't highlight while reading will have to go back!?).

What is effective design? we have to define that too? When is a design effective? I guess it depends on what the design is for. A design that causes the intended behavior change is effective. A design that communicates the intended message to the intended audience is effective. Using the triple bottom line gives you some external objective constraints to help measure this no? Behavior changes, messages, things that harm social constructs or environmental systems in the name of economic "gain", these can no longer be effective with this criteria.

Side note: how to use tiddly wiki or roam to help with this? how to insert footnotes, references, etc?

How might design pay more attention to basic needs like housing, mobility, clothes, food, and water? what does "design for better housing" look like? how about "design for improved water quality" or "design for improved water access"? Are these the kinds of things that are enabled, the kinds of design problem seeking that is unlocked, once you measure design effectiveness with something like the triple bottomline instead of exclusively the economic bottomline?

Where do I turn my own work onto these types of things? how to turn my own designing and thinking and practice towards these basic needs? Housing, mobility, clothing, food, water, these are all things that also can play into different Project Drawdown "solutions."

Is this a useful way to interact directly with the city of Baltimore? is this how to think of new content for coursework? Is this a good way to frame project briefs? Is this a good way to identify problems.

Side note: Design as problem finder, not problem solver — more on that sometime?

Do I need to differentiate between "Graphic Design" and "Design?" ??? Do I care for my own practice? When I say design, I am meaning "Signs on Substrates" or "Signs Signaling" — Signs on Substrates Signaling Sustainability!? Every gesture is a communicative tool, so its all graphic design, even if its also a sculpture or poster or cup or lamp or farm field!? So, design to improve water access, this is a graphic design project, even if its not a PSA pamphlet. How do I interact with those kinds of projects? how does graphic design? how is that brought into the design classroom? Why is this so hard for me to wrap my head around and explain? Am I trying to hard to have this make sense, be explainable, what can I just accept and move on with?

So, Sustainable design is design that pays more attention to housing, to mobility, to clothes, to food, to energy, to water, to social reform, to music, to trash collection, to waste… It pays closer attention to those things, so that more actual problems can be identified. It doesn't need to solve all of them (is that an out of date modernist idea???) but show the pain points more clearly, show the opportunities more clearly, provide the lens someone else can see a solution through? see THEIR PERSONAL solution through?

Whew, by paying more attention to these things, hopefully one also notices more alternative experiences? like how do we pay attention to these things around the city and let it show us not only design opportunities, but allow us to see the ways in which other people experience and interact with food and water and shelter.

We can also talk about these things not as human centric only: design for better housing could also include peregrine falcons and white tail rabbits and cicadas and little brown bats — how are all these other species ALSO housed better? How can design be little brown bat centered, not just human centered? Or, even Dinoflagellate centered, like designing the harbor to be a better home to brackish water loving eukaryotes AND people!?

Starting to think like that begins to surface more opportunities for visualizing the nodes of connection; how "EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED."

If everything is connected, then designing for better housing for people means we also need to design better housing for bay oysters. My house is connected to the land around it which is part of the greater watershed which is part of the bay which is part of the Atlantic which is part of Spaceship Earth… How does protecting a piedmont forest protect the bay and protect my home?

What housing constitutes good housing? what is better housing? Whose criteria, what criteria do we use? Are there multiple? once there is good housing, then there is obviously bad housing. What to do with the "bad" — destroy it? rehabilitate it? abandon it? recycle it? repurpose it?

Good: Simple row houses? my own old stone house? Bad: McMansion; some big Roland Park houses?

When is a house too big? When does a house use too much energy? how does class and race and place and culture play into that decision? Why should we have so much private space? Where does the commons and collective ownership come in? how about communes? other kinds of living communities? how are they about "better" housing or "better" water utilization?

When these things are the goal of a graphic designer, of a graphic design process, what changes? how does designing for better mobility lead to new or different design techniques or visuals? Are there old tropes we've used that say "mobility" that are no longer useful if we need a sea change? All new visual vocabularies? by learning a new we train our brains to a different understanding. What visual synergies exist to pair the ancient with the novel? There are plenty of solutions from our past, this isn't just a young person's game; this isn't just the purview of tech start ups.

Why am I so cynical and bitter and angry.

Nice! finally I figured out this button thing... now to get the button to show up in the right place!?!?!?!?!?! a useful place!?!?!?!?!?!?

New 02021 EAD & New Source

Do you just feel stuck? do you feel like you are just moving forward in time but nothing you do really matters or is that much in your control? I mean, that sounds sort of depressing. I guess its not like I'm not in control; its more like I continue to end up in the future without having made much of the present or my past? There were plans, grand ideas, and then, poof, time is gone and none of those things happened. It probably isn't too late, but other things just happened instead and now it seems hard or impossible to do the others... this is so general and non specific.

Do affirmations or mantras actually help? how many times do I chant "I want to sustain the welfare of all life" before it becomes true? before I do something useful about it?

Be Do Have.

What am I stuck on?

What do you want to sustain? not what I have going on right now. I am miserable. The state of things seems pretty bad. Our country divided. Resources depleted. I'm in some sort of rut. Is being transparent about that helpful?

What don't you want to sustain?; What do you want to abandon?. Is that a useful question? What to stop doing? What should we stop designing? instead of what can I design for you client person with metrics?

In learning about our world, it seems odd that we a) are so concerned with "preservation" of nature, of buildings, of whatever. Entropy is a fundamental law of the universe; everything tends towards chaos; entropy moves towards a maximum. The idea of "preservation" – at least with how its done right now, is sort of anti entropy? what instead is a more entropy embracing ideal? entropy embracing processes? how do you design and build WITH entropy instead of against it? Okay, so what do I want to sustain? well, dynamism that works with entropy. What do I want to sustain? how about biodiveristy. Now, after millions of years, earth always bounces back from whatever extinction events we've had in the past. So, I mean, the earth will probably be fine. But! presuming we humans want to hang in a place that is more or less like the one we've been evolving in, well, what can we do instead? do I care about sustaining the polar bears? do I care about sustaining maximum variety of tenrecs in madagascar? or do I just care about sustaining human habitable earth?

E. O. Wilson talks about "Half Earth"; how we have to keep half the earth free from humans and let the animals alone... But this doesn't seem like an option. Or even how the history of the earth has worked – humans have always BEEN A PART OF NATURE. WE ARE NATURE. WE AREN'T SEPARATE; THAT'S WHERE ALL THE PROBLEMS COME FROM; THINKING THAT WE ARE SEPARATE!?

So we can control our environment a bit? so what! so can beavers. ants farm fungus. certain creatures when they end up in new places kill the old creatures. This is a part of nature. Terror birds in south america; they got eaten by giant cats coming down from Central and North america!? I don't know where that train of thought is going.

The big fish eat the little ones.

Where does this all fit together? The idea of leaving the world, half the world anyway, alone, well it presumes that we have half the world to turn back over. do we? who do we have to move to make this happen? More importantly, can we not just make our habitats better suited for other life to live as well? Maybe that's the real issue – not that we need more "nature" but that humans need to allow for more other lives in our cities, houses, etc.

What does design for all life mean when you are urban planning? what does the welfare of all life mean when you are building a house? what does the the flourishing of all life look like when you are deciding how to generate power? how do we even define human existence in the future if we are accounting for these other things. If we get back to acknowledging our part in the web of life; our part as FELLOW travelers on spaceship earth > here we go, the trees and corals and scorpions and komodo dragons and toucans and kangaroo rats are all our fellow shipmates; they are the crew WITH us... no one should be allowed to go down with this ship; there are no life rafts; stop listneing to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk; who cares about Mars, who even cares about going to the moon some more; do something positive about spaceship earth! WE ARE ALL ALREADY ON A DAMN SPACESHIP; WAY BIGGER AND COOLER AND MORE COMPLEX THAN ANY OF US WILL EVER BUILD.

So Many Questions; so few solutions. Well, do we need solutions from me? just problem finding? problem space pointing out to be solved by interested parties to their contextual aims!?

Continue from 020210620224253 Ideas

I want to sustain reducing energy consumption. I want to sustain dynamic, resilient habitats. I want to sustain that the Chesapeake bay is habitable by all kinds of creature, that people can utilize it recreationally?

I want to sustain reading books; drinking pleasantly perfectly plain pilsners; enjoying coffee; different cultures; all purpose bicycles.

I want to get rid of individually owned automobiles, gasoline, enriched foods, soy everything.

I want to sustain helping people; improving life expectancy everywhere; innovating energy creation and storage; what happens in a meadow as dusk; walks in the woods; sunsets in state parks.

Who owns this land if we don't? can I make my tiny piece of private land a commons again? what happened to the commons? why is individual ownership of everything seen as superior? who does that benefit? I don't feel like it benefits me – and yet – I'm terrible at sharing and collaborating and collectively owning things...

I want to sustain DOING SOMETHING about what I think needs doing. So, writing things down, trying to be helpful, making some more tutorials and explainer videos? How does this play out longer term?

It is morning. I am waiting.

Waiting on a project; waiting for myself to get motivated.

I can always seem to find a way to stay focused, to figure out what to do next. Everything is a reaction. Is that natural. Do trees plan; is everything intentional; are they reacting to their environment continuously?

Is there a better job I could be doing? is RUNNING a graphic design business not the right thing, is just doing other peoples tasks/projects what I should be doing instead?

These construction guys look like they're having a good time. They get to be outside, build real stuff. Help people a little some of the time; not with made up things – like a website for invented objects just to be sold – but people who's wall is caving in or house is leaking. That's real right?

What is this obsession with real? is this really a question of "value" like what do I find valuable? Perhaps I need to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance again?

I am eating cherry pie. It is good. I am supposed to be thinking of clever things to say about the jones falls. Why is that so hard?

Visits with friends. Visits with family. These things are so strange, so foreign seeming.

I keep missing a lot. Appointments, scheduled meetings, deadlines. I was pretty bad at this stuff before; but the way things still are turning out? its just enhanced all my problems with focus and time management and paying attention to what day or time it is.

What else can I do or write about? I am at a loss today. I will go through some missing things and fill in and connect.

really? nothing?

Well... as soon as I sat down to write... kids wokeup. f.

Okay. what prompt shall we use today? is my design good design?

How do you define good design? Ethically good? formally good? socially good? environmentally good? economically good? all of the above? This question led Dieter Rams to his Ten Principles for Good Design — what should it lead a contemporary Sustainabilitist to???

Good design = formal goodness.

This is frequently the main "good" I think people are talking about right? That something LOOKS good? How does "looking good" evolve when you are using the triple bottom line for your judgements? (see: 020210601223047 Ideas)

Good Formalism = Modernist Formalism

And this is the problem right? the way we teach and understand most design disciplines, they are stuck in the mindset that what makes "good" design are the things that make "modernist design" — following the instructions for modernism = making good design. That is the recipe. NOT following the instructions for modernist design just gets you to bad design.

Maybe this is fine, sometimes. But this misses a lot of alternative content and contexts. Right? Like, is modernism as a style always correct? is modernism as an ideology always positive?

This overlaps with the Form <> Content <> Context things I frequently think about.

Good formalism(s): what makes a good formal answer?

What does sustainable Graphic Design look like?

Why do I keep coming back to this question?

I believe that aesthetics matter.

I believe that aesthetics are a visualization of an ideology

Having a specific ideology should bring with it specific aesthetic choices.

Modernism is my favorite example of this... I should probably do my own revisionist history lesson on why modernist things are the way they are? And how that relates to moderno-techno-consumer-capitalism?

Okay, so you have ways of thinking.

I am failing at my endeavor.

Free Culture > In The Beginning Culture was Free! (from Lecture Ideas for Utah Workshop intro)

If culture was free, what happened? when did people learn that by controlling culture and cultural production they gained power? Is this something that was learned early on? Why do we continue to let this happen? If culture WAS free, why can't we just go back to that?

So, I made it a month, sort of. This is proving to be harder than I thought. The format is getting in the way of just writing. My inability to focus and being pulled in too many directions by life, kids, house stuff, work stuff, school stuff, climate stuff, whatever, means I don't dedicate the time each day this plan requires.

What can I do less of? what can I stop? what am I okay missing out on? Maybe those are new questions to ask?

I am reading this book, The Joy of Missing Out (JOMO), and that's a key element: What are you willing to miss out on? How can I figure this out with my wife and family so that we as a small group can start being more sustainable? how does that trickle then out to others? the rest of our families? our friends? our community?

What do I have to miss out on to do the things I wish? What do I wish to do? I have to answer that in the first place? this is like the What do you want to sustain? question. You have to define that; state that; to then actually define what is next!?

John Ehrenfeld states in the book Flourishing “The key to doing something about sustainability is that you first have to say what you want to sustain.” Ehrenfeld wants to sustain that “all humans and other life should flourish” (pg 23). Using Ehrenfeld’s thinking, Sustainable Graphic Design is design made for clients that believe all life should flourish, design made to promote messages about sustainability-as-flourishing, and design made with materials and processes that promote and sustain the state of flourishing too.

Graphic designers are form makers. Sustainable graphic designers must make formal decisions. How does the sustainable designer concern themselves with the forms and aesthetics of a solution? Are there visual choices that are more sustainable? What form says “I believe that humans and all life should flourish?” Are aesthetics as they relate to sustainability even important?

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What do you want to sustain?

How does this question influence one's designing? are there materials that then one can't use? how about power sources?

Graphic designers are form makers. Sustainable graphic designers must make formal decisions. How does the sustainable designer concern themselves with the forms and aesthetics of a solution? Are there visual choices that are more sustainable? What form says “I believe that humans and all life should flourish?” Are aesthetics as they relate to sustainability even important?

• How does one factor sustainability into typography choices?
• In The Joy of Missing Out (JOMO), Svend Brinkmann describes this idea of aesthetics in regard to life; the art of life; the way you give your life and actions their "form" > perhaps I need to explore this definition more? aesthetics = form-giving? how you control and shape and form your actions, thoughts, behaviors, life!? This is more Aesthetics as it relates/comes from the realm of philosophy? do I mean something different when I am talking about all of this?

I relate aesthetics with form.

I relate form with the external surfaces of an object — its shape, size, scale, color, edges, material appearance, etc. But do I have an incomplete idea of form? This is what leads to the "Are there visual choices that are more sustainable?" question. What are the exterior signaling opportunities?

• Typography that minimizes ink use?
• Typography that minimizes page count?
• Type faces themselves that takes less energy to load/use on a computer?
• How about the Sara De Bondt printing mainfesto? (I updated it myself w/ permission for the Ecovention Europe catalog).

Aesthetics and beauty? beauty and form?

Related to Form <> Content <> Context

Some thoughts on maintenance.

I sat down at the end of the day and decided to fix some old shoes. The shoes themselves are not particularly nice nor are they particularly well made. As is true of most shoes these days, everything is just glued together... the places of most wear have had their glue bonds break and all the seams and such a pulling apart... So, I figured I would just glue everything back together. Now, I have a couple different kinds of glue to try – but I thought one way to make the "maintenance" meaningful was to use Sugru – its a silicone rubber "glue" that starts out as little chunks of moldeable putty. It comes in various colors, and so "fixing" with it decorates what you are fixing in an intentional way.

Do ideas/techniques like Kintsugi ... Are things like that kinds of Signs Signaling Sustainability? When objects age; receive maintenance; and then wear that on their sleeve as a badge of honor, does that help signal a different way forward? noble? am I ego trapping this?

What should a repair look like – should they be invisible? should it be as little repair as possible? can you overrepair something?

The point of this was, hey, what is an interesting way that I can make these shoes last a little bit longer? what else can I do to get a bit more wear out of them? AND can we show others that they can fix or maintain their things by HOW it is done – make the repair intentionally signaling.

How is every design a communicative design? how does one "graphic design" when you aren't making a poster or book or sign or website?

Related:

• Hail the Maintainers from Aeon Magazine
• The Joy of Missing Out (JOMO): some thoughts on maintenance (curators?) there too
• On Mending

I started re-reading Victor Papanek: The Politics Of Design. Its got some great thoughts and a really useful timeline of work/ideas — how Victor Papanek's work fits in with all this other work happening at the same time. The timeline is called “Papanek's Life and Era.” I wish I could have seen the show this book is the “catalog” for...

In reading this again, sort of skimming through as a form of procrastination today, I am jus again reminded that "designing" isn't necessarily putting a pretty exterior on something; its not about decorating a surface. Design is about finding something you think isn't working, and trying to make it work!? finding someone that has a need and doing something about it – with them, not for them.

I ordered a lot of new seed today — grass seeds, wildflower mixes, some cool shade plants. How is getting the widest possible variety of plants to grow in my yard a design project? what does it signal? Does it fulfill a "design for the welfare of all life" angle!?

How do I build day to day and week to week? Am I worried about that too much right now? If I go back in and add missing Items, turn more things into questions, do a better job of linking and cross linking and getting rid of redundancies and unused tags... how does that help the experience? what happens when you find this online? how can this take over for the sustainabilitist? is the whole thing the replacement, or just a part... what should live as bjornpaedia and what is the sustainabilitist? how do I export this without all the tiddler controls so its just pages/links!?

When do I start streaming/recording doing this stuff!!??

How does a self-created "encyclopedia" help with sustainability? how can it be added to by others? do I need another tool, another repo, can my own ramblings AND a climate design encyclopedia live together?

What is a Pragmatic Utopian? And why do I like that phrase so much?

Pragmatic: relating to matters of fact or practical affairs often to the exclusion of intellectual or artistic matters : practical as opposed to idealistic (from MW)

It can also mean that you follow the philosophical concept Pragmatism

Utopian: having impossibly ideal conditions especially of social organization; proposing or advocating impractically ideal social and political schemes (from MW). This version of Utopia comes from Sir Thomas More and his book, Utopia (1516)

How to you combine those two things? and yeah, why am I so into that phrase.

Bjarke Ingels uses it frequently to describe many of the BIG projects.

"There is nothing like a dream to create the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood tomorrow." —Victor Hugo

Murray Bookchin had a great speech sort of on this too: Utopia, not futurism: Why doing the impossible is the most rational thing we can do

so if utopian ideas are IDEALISTIC and probably unrealizable (at lesat in the present); and pragmatics is that you are decidedly NOT IDEALISTIC but instead are dealing with immediate practicalities ... how do these fit together? Can you IDEALISTICALLY work within the PRACTICAL? Are there matter of fact, practical, everyday things that are better solved with fantastical idealistic solutions instead of the status quo ones??? or more importantly, can we use the everyday status quo content and tools of the present to instead create idealistic tomorrows!!??

Permaculture farming in the city? is that a gesture that is pragmatically utopian? the plastic recycling machinery where anyone in a neighborhood can recycle their own plastics to make whatever simple things they need? Are even ideas like Kintsugi one version of this? An ideal of maintenance over time; and practical fixing in the present with materials that point towards this other possible tomorrow? Using F/LOSS is an example of this? many of the tools are pragmatic; they do one thing, and focus on doing it simply or quickly over looking good or being easy to figure out (this is a gross generalization that isn't really true, should probably omit) – but they are part of an ecosystem that values FREEDOM over all else; that is utopian for sure – pragmatic utopian.

So, why am I interested in this? becuase! this is what "design" must become – pragmatics, solving real issues of RIGHT NOW with whatever resources are available. But, it can't just solve moderno techno capitalist problems, it can't just get people onto some western neo-colonial track, we need to solve problems AND provide alternative visions of tomorrow – Design that has IDEALS and PRACTICAL application. Practically applied ideals. Ideals applied with practical tools and approaches?

My shoe repairs already wore out. oops. So that wasn't the right way to fix something. Is that why people don't bother fixing things? entropy is always faster, better, stronger?

Biking is the ultimate city transport. What do people have against biking!? Roads aren't just for cars; roads pre-date cars

When will I ever have time to read books again???

When will I ever have time to bake bread again??? what about all our other cooking and fermenting projects?

Why is having this carefully planned yard so important? why bother? does it show anyone another way forward? does it DO anything? Is there a way to make it do more!? Is it about the welfare of ALL the OTHER LIFE around here? not mine or my neighbors, but the cardinal's or the dobson fly's?

Why is this such a struggle?

What are these characters I play? the sustainabilitist? the libre designer? how do I embody them more? how do I act more unselfconciously? how do I act!? I mean act as in actually go out and do something. I have "done something" man, in, years? I talk a lot about doing things, I tell other people to do things? I plan vaguely about doing things... but nothing really gets done!?

I don't even know what day it is anymore.

What is my Traditional Ecological Knowledge – who has some in Balitmore!? what can I learn, listen to, participate in. Not to "improve" myself but to better help others? to better serve others? to better help the local biome?

Piedmont Forest

How does my yard help a hellbender salamander? how does it help a heron? how does it help the peregrine falcons up the road? how does it help the neighborhood bunnies? how does it help the neighbors?

Is this part of the issue – if you ask "how does what I am doing help X" and "X" isn't "make me more money" in some shape or form, then no wonder it seems weird to do ????????

what do I mean here, I mean... well, like whats the cheapest, simplest way to update this house. None of the things I am trying to do really fall into that. Whtas the best return on investment, again probably not the things I am hoping to do... Our yard projects don't fall into this, theyre probably a detriment.

How does one find tax breaks or grants or anything else for the kinds of things we are trying to do!?

Things to try to flesh out!?

• Define Sustainable Graphic Design
• Find a good example of sustainable graphic design
• New Recycling Symbols
• An Instruction Manual for Climate designers
• Material Ecologies
• Befriend a Tree
• What to do with waste?

So, okay, so I spend a few days coming up with lists like this, but then what? when can I actually get around to WRITING something about any of this stuff? to explaining any of it? what is the goal? and where is the time and energy?

Well, I think I might have lost my earlier post for today, woops.

Gotta get ready to go.

Sto pdoing things you don't want to do – not in like an oh, this is boring I don't want to do it, but I mean projects not really directly in the service of what you want to sustain.

Find more time to work on this, make connections, create some essays for sending out into the world.

We are packed. I am tired. There are never enough hours to do everything. Do I just have too many things I want to do? How can I be better at not "wasting" time – meaning doing things that are of no benefit to myself!?

Tomorrow we drive to Maine. How am I planning to offset this trip? Can I take trips anymore if I want to do something about climte change? How can I better use the time and energy? how can we do something more with our yard and house and lives?

It was way easier to design a poster everyday than to try and write something personally useful everyday.

So, if I start collecting these ideas, what does one do with them? do I need something to do? why can't I just accept getting them down, getting things clarified for myself, letting it direct me better? How can this be all things: journal and personal therapy and knowledge exploration and idea working out space and essay generator!? and thats just what it is. If it is seen or not, if I do smoething or not, the things are here, theyre down, theyre connected!

In 6 hours we go to maine. Not tomorrow.

What is in Maine? time? space? calm? peace? a change? what am I seeking that I hope to find there we're unable to find or do here?

Go to bed.

That needs to be my new mantra above all else. Go to bed. Not more writing, more sustainabilitizing, but more sleeping.

how to get rid of automobiles? What is the point of "personal" mobility? why should something like a car be an individually owned conveyance? why can't we see how useful collectively owning a fleet of robot cars could be? why not no cars? What is the advantage of a car? why cars? who benefits from me owning a car? how might we maximize that benefit to more people? does this network of roads do aything useful? do more roads make us better as a people or worse? what if you couldn't just hopin your car and drive whereeer you wanted? what would you do then?

Why am I so against cars these days? I used to like cars so much.

Driving is horrible.

There are some new stats from Argonne National Lab re: electric cars, battery making resources, carbon footprints, and what electric grid you use to charge your EV with… look this up… car and driver did some analysis on this, reuters, businessweek maybe… link to all that stuff and read up more on it!?

IS this old car I'm driving okay? like its got okay gas mileage, its about to die, maybe, but the engine runs great... should we just get a rav fucking 4 prime? I just want our silly mini mini van as an electric vehicle with tiny gas generator...

Hmmm.

What is the goal? who is the audience? who can I help? why do I want to do these things? Why am I so easily distracted? who am I helping with all this collecting and "writing"? ✍️

How do I make things better for myself? for my family? for my neighborhood? for my city? for my community? for my state? for my watershed? for my country? for my continent? for my tectonic plate? for my planet?

How to design when you aren't designing objects, when you aren't skinning surfaces? but when design is about behavior and action? The John Thackara quote about designers making posters instead of taking actual action comes to mind here...

How is design what you do, how you live, who you help; not objects you make? how to I move my web designing away from web designing and to something else?

its so late. there are no good beds to sleep on here. I've not really done anything for a week. it is oddly refreshing and easy. I wish I was getting some reading done. but other than that. I could really not care less about not doing work...

So then how to transition? how to make money but not be a designer or professor and do the things I want and think are important!?

what is the way to get started on the plastic making project? what is the way to get started on the net zero house graphics project? what is the way to get started on any other home yard/energy efficiency projects? What's the point of all of this anyway?

What can I build with nothing? what can I do with no extra resources? How can it all be powered with renewables? how does any new work offset itself?

I want to be better? but what does this mean? how does one do this?

So, what is a sustainabilitist?. I claim that a sustainabilitist is someone that embraces "Post-environmentalism" … see: The Sustainabilitist Manifesto

And so then this kind of person, this sustainabilitist, then somehow is able to correctly value social, environmental, and economic things in more holistic, interlinked, everything-is-connected, type ways.

A designer as sustainabilitist then designs for ALL these things together... There has to be some awareness for the market... some for society... some for nature.

The whole problem with this is that it envisions the systems as working the way they do now, but made better, made more holistic. It doesn't perhaps envision a different way, a different set of values completely. Instead of high tech and high value and high ROI economically, what if its just getting by – and getting by with a way more socialist or communist view point for what "ownership" means? for what "production" means?

A designer is an emerging synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist and evolutionary strategist.

— R. Buckminster Fuller

This is perhaps what a sustianabilitist must be too. Part everything. A real mutli-disciplinarian. A renaissance person. How do you understand how to collaborate with people; empathize; communicate; make; weld; calculate; all at high level and together? How do you see all the connections? how do you understand all the complex webs? Can any 1 person do this anymore? does everyone have to not only be a renaissance person, but also be an expert in something and connect with other multi-disciplinarians and experts? everything needs dynamic, resilient, adaptable, on the fly teams made up of whomever is best and available at that time? take the model of Superfriendly and turn it on every situation and problem? Where does large bureaucracy and government fit here?

Is it important to be a designer as sustainabilitsit, or just to be a sustainabilitist. Naturally some design will be required. But if you focuse on the sustainability things and not the design... does that limit one? does that free one? the design stuff is mostly pretty easy actually. If you can see the real problems in the right way, then you can much more correclty find and forumulate the right solutions. if you are just looking at solutions... you jsust keep having what we have. this works for some popel? its probably food for llbean. But its not great for everyone...

I digress.

What the F is up with bike lanes???

What is a Sustainabilitist?

I don't know. But I still want to get it figured out.

how to focus? how to set goals? what are my goals? what is the point of all of this? I just wanted to be better? thats not really a goal? better at what? designing? teaching? parenting? all of the above? I maybe can't pick all of those things – which would improve things the most?

Goals.

1. Sleep more.
2. Perfect less, do more.
3. Get things done; stop delaying!?
4. I need some real, serious goals?

So, maybe a way to provide some more structure to this site is to try and actually write bits and pieces of an essay? can I pick apart what I did for my talk at University of Nebraska? how about explaining the projects that I explained to them? what else might be good...

What have I already written about I can try to update? What can I recombine or revise? How much have my thougts changed? improved? become more complex?

Back home.

We went to a really cool zoo.

We drove a lot.

I felt like a hypocrite again

Why am I such a judgemental asshole?

Did bezos really need to ride in that space capsule?

What is next?

How to actually get working on the precious plastics stuff?

Call attenborough.

who else would benefit from that idea?

How can doing a "will it shred" plastic day teach people about the different kinds of plastics and the viability of each as a material?

Can every thing I want to do be turned into a public facing teaching opportunity? how can we bypass the traditional formal education systems and get more people more involved with more things and more knowledge?

who needs to learn things? what do we need to learn? are any of "my things" good "for everyone" kinds of knowledge!?

What do I need to learn and from whom?

Where are things going? What is "enough"? What should I write? who should I write for? is it myself? do I need to be clever? why do I feel that need? Can I just be clear?

What is a good short term writing goal? some sort of designed/illsutrated zine ala Tony Venne's MFA book? > The Designer as Sustainabilitist (A Table of Contents)

What else?! what is different or special or strange or new or more? or less?

I am adding things, are they useful? what is the goal of this, how much to collect? how to organize? how to help someone access this all?

I started, with Chris Attenborough, to work on a Precious Plastics oven today! hurray.

What am I doing?

• Why do I have so many computers?
• Why do we need so many streaming services?
• Why even watch TV?
• How can I sleep more?
• How can I do less?